Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Jeffy's Corner: Miracle in the Middle East

Episode Date: December 12, 2015

Jeff Fisher is live from 6am to 8am ET, Saturday. Listen for free on The Blaze Radio Network: www.theblaze.com/radio & www.iheart.comFollow Jeffy on Twitter: @JeffyMRA &Like Jeffy's Facebook: www.facebook.com/JeffFisherRadio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Jeff Fisher Show. Hey, it's Glenn, and I want to remind you, peace of mind is tough to come by these days unless you have a Liberty Safe. With a Liberty Safe, you won't worry when you leave the house because you'll know your valuables are protected. And right now, you can get free delivery to your home on any Liberty Safe. Go to LibertySafe.com for factory direct pricing. LibertySafe.com made in the USA lifetime warranty and peace of mind. LibertySafe.com. And what I want to do is talk to you about this extraordinary experience.

I would describe this as surreal even. The whole thing began when Glenn decided that we would start the Nazarene Fund to aid the Christians overseas who had been driven from their homes or killed or worse. What could be worse? I always wondered, my mom would always say that when I was young. It's a fate worse than death, she'd say. What's worse than death? always I would always wonder, and as I grew older, I understood.

Humans can do unspeakable, unspeakable things to each other, in the name of God, in the name of Allah, in the name of whatever name you want to insert there. We will talk more on that later. Once Glenn began talking with you about the Nazarene Fund and you so generously, opened not only your hearts, but your wallets, and you began what would be a $12 million plus influx of cash, including jars of coins, $37.32, as one man sent in a jar, his life savings essentially. a wedding ring a wedding ring sent by a woman

who she had discussed with her husband the fact that they wanted to do whatever they could this wedding ring belonged to her mother and she sent the wedding ring to Mercury 1 5,000 I think this ring is worth

and will bring will bring to the fund. That is when my odyssey began. I didn't know at the time I would have the opportunity to witness this incredible series of events firsthand. Never dreamed of. I had no idea. I would play any role in this at all. But as so often happens, always. God has had a plan for me. It's the reason I'm talking to you now. If you know how I got to the blaze and how I'm even sitting in this chair right now, filling in for Jeffrey. Several weeks ago, as plans were coming together to begin the evacuation of the Christians from Syria and Iraq, I was asked by American Dream Labs here, Ben McPherson and the rest of the

crew, to accompany them on the journey to Iraq, to, document not only the evacuation but to also help tell the story of Father Douglas. As the days went by, plans changed, as they so often do, not only here at Mercury Studios, everything is fluid, but those plans changed as it relates to those Christians leaving the Middle East. I was unable to travel with Dream Labs in the end. I was disappointed. but then again God had a plan and it's funny how he

makes exactly what should happen when it should happen it's even even funnier in an ironic sense how we tend to worry about things that in retrospect we had no need to worry about at all

I think of the time we spend worrying about things that never even happen that's something I'm still trying to force myself to learn. It's not an easy lesson, and I'm sure you know. So time goes by, as it turned out, I was asked to travel with Mercury 1 and Mercury Radio Arts, the parent company, it traveled with them. To say a talented group of people is a complete understatement. Their mission and mine is to tell the story. to you and the world so that we could in turn get more of these victims of unspeakable terror to safety at least out of harm's way Ellen our director of content who a very unique woman if you ever have

the chance just just Google Ellen Wheeler she's an incredible incredibly talented woman who has spent time not only in front of the camera if you've ever watched soap operas. Guiding Light is the one I believe she was on, played twins. I may be wrong, but I'll ask Beth coming up. Beth not is one of the most talented, if not the best producer of stories

I've ever had the honor of knowing. We'll actually talk to her at the bottom of the hour. Nick Nick was our sound guy Nick is a funny guy he's a gifted sound artist who would end up traveling with his dead cat or what seemed to be

a dead cat in the in the form of a of a microphone wonderful wonderful sense of humor this Nick Archer has. Throughout the morning, by the way, I'm going to be playing you some audio from my cell phone. These are things that I have actually recorded on my cell phone. So if the audio level is a little low, please accept my apologies, but I think it's more important that you hear it,

even if it is not perfect, then not hear it at all. But with Nick, one of the things that a sound guy travels with is this boom microphone. You may have seen it in news stories before. It just looks like a furry cat. I'll share a video with you a little bit later on that. And Matt, Matt was one of our, it is one of our videographers and editors. Earth. Matt is one of the quietest people on planet Earth until you get to know him and then just try shutting him up. I love Matt. Matt is a wonderful, wonderful human being. These are the people

that I shared the initial leg of our journey with. I couldn't ask for a better group of people to be with. The 12-hour plus flight that made up the first leg of our journey was uneventful. We took off from Dallas. We arrived in Dohar, Qatar, or Qatar, depending on how you want to say it. That's where we met up with Nick, who had flown in directly from Florida. We had a 12-hour layover there. It was an opportunity for us to get to know each other as a team. Obviously, that's crucial when you're going to be telling a story of this magnitude of this sort. If you think traveling with a family member is tough,

imagine traveling with a group of people who we've never spent this much time before so closely. Just think about what it takes to get to know these people and to get to understand what it's like to spend entire days. Sleep-deprived days, 21-hour days, which is what they averaged. I think we got somewhere between two and three hours of sleep a night. It was anywhere from 8 to, I think, 10-hour time difference. So you can imagine just the ability for each of us to mesh together, to be able to do our jobs

because if there was one week link in the chain, obviously the chain would fall apart. Those 12 hours that we got to spend just in the hotel in the airport was amazing. And by the way, if you take the signs off the stores and the restaurants in Doha, International Airport there in Qatar, you could be just about anywhere in the world one of the things I have grown to dislike over the years

the homogenization of the world years ago when I worked for the Nashville Network and I did stories on the different states around the country from Washington State to Louisiana to Alabama Texas even

it was just beginning then this was back in 19th 1989, 1990. Yeah, I'm that old. You would travel to different parts of the country, and different parts of the country seemed different. There were different stores. There were different restaurants.

There was different everything. But now, if you closed your eyes or even if you had them open, the restaurant, the McDonald's on every corner for crying out loud, the Burger King on every corner. In Slovakia, the H&M. in every mall.

Having Katie Perry stare at you from a mall in Stockholm, Sweden, or Kosciets to Slovakia, is just surreal. But then I digress.

The next leg of our journey, a relatively short airplane ride from Qatar to Urbiel, Iraq. We landed about three hours later following an uneventful flight. Stepping into that airport and going through security was strange to say the least. We were inside Iraq,

a place I'd heard about for over 20 years. But now I was there. I tried as best I could to look around and take in all the sights and the sounds, even a banner that read a future embracing the heritage. As Glenn would say, That can be a dangerous thing.

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